Enriching the Health of Physics Education
2008 Winter Meeting
January 19-23, 2008
http://aapt.org/events/wm2008/
Marriott Waterfront Hotel
Baltimore, Maryland
"Energy and Entropy: A Paradigms in Physics Approach to Thermodynamics"
Date: Tuesday, Jan.22
Author: Michael Rogers, Ithaca College
Co-Author(s): Allen Wasserman
Abstract: Oregon State University's Paradigms in Physics is a revisioning of the junior-level curriculum where nine, three-week-long courses offered in series focus on unifying themes. The Energy and Entropy paradigm approaches thermodynamics using a quantum mechanical perspective.
With its internally consistent unification of statistics with microscopic mechanics, quantum mechanics offers thermodynamics based on quantum averages and quantum probabilities. But thermodynamic systems are not the isolated quantum systems found in QM courses. Interactions of thermodynamic systems with the "outside" has enormous consequences with thermal variables now understood as macroscopic quantum averages and thermal probabilities as macroscopic quantum probabilities with an entropy postulate playing the crucial role of matchmaker in this marriage. This approach gives rise to an overarching philosophy and a clear pedagogical path that allows thermodynamic methods to resemble the epigrammatic laws of "real physics." Adapting this approach to a traditional, semester-long thermodynamics course at Ithaca College will be discussed.
